“I didn’t even know this little farm was here.”

But Brunswick’s Bryan Franco read online about Morris Farm’s Thanksgiving potluck. And Thursday night, Nov. 21, he joined about 100 other people at the Gardiner Road, Wiscasset nonprofit for its annual tradition. He even brought a dish: Sweet potatoes with coconut cream, blackberries, cranberries, maple syrup, cardamom, cloves and allspice. “That’s about it, no sugar.”

When he showed Wiscasset Newspaper over to it, among the many dishes people had brought and scooped out food from, Franco’s sweet potatoes were about gone.

Franco likes community meals, for the kinds of foods they have and for community, he said. The former Alabama man feels meals like the one he just had and contributed to reflect Maine. “The people that come to these really care about what they make. And it’s a really nice type of a thing. This is like Maine. It’s community,” he said looking out onto the room.  

Longtime attendees Melissa Hunnibell – who has led workshops at Morris Farm, including a ceramic pie plate-making one in partnership with Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts – and past co-president Merry Fossel like the event for catching up with people they know and talking with people they don’t know. The Alna women estimated about a third of the faces were new to them. “I think for some people this is an opening to the community. So we love that,” Fossel said.

Fossel and husband Les Fossel’s neighbor Brenda Olcott attended for the first time. How was the meal? “Delicious!”

Wiscasset’s Debbie Wallace was pleased with how her Portuguese sausage stuffing, or chorico, came out. “And it came out of the oven just in time for me to get it here!”